Lakes Como, Maggiore, Orta & Lugano - July 5-11, 2009

Since its creation in 1861, Italy has struggled to develop an effective political system and a secure sense of national identity. This concise history covers the period from the fall of the Roman Empire in the west to the present day, but focuses on the difficulties Italy has faced in forging a nation state during the past two centuries. The opening chapters consider the geographical and cultural obstacles to unity, and survey the long centuries of political fragmentation in the peninsula since the sixth century. It was this legacy of fragmentation that Italy's new rulers had to strive to overcome when the country became united, more by accident than design, in 1859-61.

As a youth of 18, Ernest Hemingway was eager to fight in the Great War. Poor vision kept him out of the army, so he joined the ambulance corps instead and was sent to France. Then he transferred to Italy where he became the first American wounded in that country during World War I. Hemingway came out of the European battlefields with a medal for valor and a wealth of experience that he would, 10 years later, spin into literary gold with A Farewell to Arms. This is the story of Lieutenant Henry, an American, and Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. The two meet in Italy, and almost immediately Hemingway sets up the central tension of the novel: the tenuous nature of love in a time of war. During their first encounter, Catherine tells Henry about her fiancé of eight years who had been killed the year before in the Somme. The two begin an affair, with Henry quite convinced that he "did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards." Soon enough, however, the game turns serious for both of them and ultimately Henry ends up deserting to be with Catherine.

This 104-page book includes a chapter on the history and culture of the area, 9 tours taking in sights ranging from Verona's magnificent San Zeno Maggionre church to the harmonious blend of natural scenery and architecture around Lake Como, leisure-time suggestions, and a comprehensive information section packed with essential contact addresses and numbers. Plus around 180 remarkable photographs and maps.

Italy has long been associated with love, images of Romeo serenading Juliet, and over-sexed locals pinching tourist flesh. But another Italian love affair has been going on for just as long, namely the writers who've been enchanted with the place for centuries In her collection of 19th- and 20th-century British and American authors writing about Italy, Powers has chosen the somber, brooding poetry of the Romantics; Robert Browning, Byron, and Shelley and the self-reflective contemporary verses of Joseph Brodsky, Richard Wilbur, and Charles Wright. She represents the American and British confrontation with Italian manners through two short stories and in excerpts from the fiction of Forster, James, and John Mortimer, among others. Travel literature forms the largest segment of both anthologies. Both collections preface each entry with bio-bibliographical information, but Cahill adds, as epilog "for the literary traveler," a fascinating contemporary walking tour of the places mentioned in each selection. She also includes a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These complementary anthologies are fine additions to the travel collections of public libraries and academic collections supporting the travel literature genre.

Eric Newby escapes through a hospital window to become a POW on the run in Italy in 1943. With the Nazis moving in from the north and no certain way back to England, his situation appears grim. But with the help of local farmers and villagers, who risk their lives to shelter him, he survives. Hiding in shepherds' huts and even a cave, he achieves three precious months of freedom - and meets the determined and courageous woman who would become his wife. An intimate account of the horror and surrealism of war, and of the heroism and selflessness of those caught up in its madness.

A former journalist for the Daily Telegraph brings new light to Mussolini's political contributions and his embattled conscience in this absorbing and fresh biography of the man who created, and then lost control of, the Fascist movement. Farrell follows his subject's numerous underlings and mistresses to piece together a portrait untainted by the maniacal persona Mussolini has inherited from history. This balanced perspective opens the door for an updated look at European Fascism and Anti-Semitism, one that will be useful to understanding the bloody chess game Europe's foreign ministers and military commanders played during the two World Wars. Farrell seems committed to exonerating Il Duce from complicity with Hitler's crimes, going so far as to argue that, while "the French had been only too willing to round up the Jews," Mussolini and his officers went out of their way to save the Jewish people in their territories. Farrell recounts Mussolini's life with precision and detail. Though long and complex, this new reading of Italy's most infamous leader and his place in history's most violent chapter is an original and important work.

A new series of richly illustrated garden tour books and your ticket to seeing the best of Europe's horticultural legacy. The guidebook stress history and national identity as the keys to understanding the very different characteristics of a country's gardens. Vestiges of Roman times can still be seen in Italian gardens, and the maps make garden touring easy to organize.

The book is written in retrospect, 13 years after World War II's end, and reveals the Finzi-Continis' 1943 deportation to Germany right from the start: "Who could say if they found any sort of burial at all?" The author has re-created a tragic era in which even nobility could not outrun events, let alone admit they needed to. All is foretold in the novel's Manzonian epigraph, "The heart, to be sure, always has something to say about what is to come, to him who heeds it. But what does the heart know ~ only a little of what has already happened."

Cesare Pavese's last and greatest novel, returns to Italy from California after the Second World War. He has done well in America, but success hasn't taken the edge off his memories of childhood, when he was an orphan living at the mercy of a bitterly poor farmer. He wants to learn what happened in his native village over the long, terrible years of Fascism; perhaps, he even thinks, he will settle down. And yet as he uncovers a secret and savage history from the war—a tale of betrayal and reprisal, sex and death—he finds that the past still haunts the present. The novel is intense lyricism and tragic import, a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature that has been unavailable to American readers for close to fifty years.

The Rough Guide to The Italian Lakes is the definitive guide to this region of legendary natural beauty. A 16-page full colour section introduces the highlights of the lakes with inspiring accounts of all the sights, from the Duomo in Milan to the villas and gardens of Lake Garda. In addition there are two full-colour 4-page inserts on ''Reading the Streets'' (on the architecture of the region) and ''The Great Outdoors'' (covering cycling, hiking, watersports etc). The guide includes practical tips on how to get the best out of the lakes, from exploring Lake Como to cruising on Lake Maggiore and discovering Lake Orta. There are candid reviews of the best places to stay, eat, drink and shop.